Short Guide to Proposal Preparation

• What Goes Into a Proposal
  • The Cover Page
  • The Abstract
  • The Project Description (including Facilities Available Section)
  • The Bibliography
  • The Biographical Sketch
  • Current Support and Pending Applications
  • The Budget
  • The Budget Justification
  • Attachments
  • Where to Submit Proposals
• The University Review Process

• The Post Submission Period

• Writing a Better Proposal

   

BUDGET JUSTIFICATION

This section is one of the more important parts of a proposal, and one that suffers too much neglect. Where once it was enough to list the items needed and their costs, now you must make a case for almost everything you need. The better your case, the better your chance of getting what you want.

The budget justification serves another purpose: it's a self-check against budget padding. The budget should contain requests for everything you need to do the proposed work in a first-class style, but nothing beyond that. If you find it hard to justify a particular item, perhaps that item is really superfluous.

A budget justification may seem redundant in many cases, but in fact it is usually not. The need for a particular piece of equipment, for instance, may be implied in the project description, but the implication is not necessarily apparent to a non-specialist reviewer. The need must be made explicit. The place to do this is in the budget justification, which should begin on a page as handy to the budget as possible.

These are the major items to include in your budget justification:

• Salaries for research associates, graduate students, technicians, administrative staff ^*, and hourly help
• Permanent equipment, item by item, in terms of its place both in the proposed project and in the existing facilities already available
• Large or unusual categories of supplies
• Travel, especially any sort of foreign travel
• Consultant's fees
• Subcontract costs
• Any special items not easily justified by the nature of the proposal as a whole

  ^*The Federal government considers the salaries of administrative and clerical staff as indirect costs. Charging these salaries as direct costs is appropriate only in particular circumstances. For more information please contact any of the OCG proposal analysts.

In short, it's better to include too many items in the budget justification than not to include enough.

Next: Attachments